


to have squeezed the universe into a ball

by CurareChai



Category: Leverage
Genre: Gen, Melancholy, Platonic Romance, Post-Canon, Purple Prose
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-10
Updated: 2016-07-10
Packaged: 2018-07-18 01:53:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,054
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7294762
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CurareChai/pseuds/CurareChai
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Leverage International's first con, in mostly-unrelated pieces</p>
            </blockquote>





	to have squeezed the universe into a ball

**Author's Note:**

  * For [afrocurl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/afrocurl/gifts).



Parker looked over the roof of the skyscraper, wind catching at the ends of her clothes. In her hands she clutched the file they had come for, faked toxicity reports on NuWorks' latest line of children’s cribs. Eliot and Hardison were arguing about something unimportant, voices tinny over comms.

She took a step back from the roof’s edge, ready to jump.

***

There was always downtime in the days after a con, where they wiped down their weapons and broke down their trails and came down from the adrenaline high of a job well done. Hardison was scouting a few black book leads for their second case, nothing solid yet.

He opened a couple of spare terminals just to look busy, pulling up the new Marvel trailer in the background. He'd always liked superheroes, the way they were so sure that the city would always need them. 70 years, a baker's dozen of powers, and New York was still filled with radioactive grandstanding megalomaniacs; you'd think someone would write them a memo.

A notification flashed, his account cracker alerting him that another Black Book company was already all but bankrupt. No point in ruining them, another name crossed off the list. The thing was, he knew there was a lot of work ahead of them, the same way he knew the video would fade to black right before the money shot, or that Eliot would-

"Get your hands off my shit," he said, waving Eliot away from the teetering pile of empty bottles and plastic wrappers as he returned to scouting companies. He knew that he had time. He just wasn't sure if time was... enough, or something. He's not exactly a shrink, sue him.

"What do you want me to do, leave it all here?" Eliot griped, ignoring him and grabbing some of the dishes on the table anyway.

Hardison squirmed, trying to get his feet between Eliot and the rest of his stuff. "I'll do it eventually, honest." He jutted out his lip, stubborn.

"Fine, but you're going to have to move at some point, this is disgusting," Eliot said, leaving it as a moot point for now and turning around to leave the room with the plates he picked up. In the kitchen the water turned on, the sink filling with sudsy water.

Hardison watched the empty doorway carefully, listening for the splash of the dishes to start. "What if this is all we do?" he said, voice light and conversational, quiet. _What if this is all I can give you,_  he carefully didn't say. He waited for an answer to a question he wasn't asking.

***

The moments after they finished a case were always hardest. Not the heist itself, but the reveal afterwards, the tearful gratitude and amazed wonder and the gaps each client left behind them. Parker sat high in her chair but even she couldn't fill the emptiness, the brewpub closed behind them, sunset leaking under the windowsills.

In the kitchen Eliot started chopping, rhythmic, picking up a couple of potatoes without knowing what he'd make yet, adding whatever he found in the produce drawer. The sound echoed in the stillness, softened the edges a little, coaxing movement out of Parker as she rubbed her eyes. The sizzle of the pan and the clink of the silverware added to the backdrop, building up layers over that cloying silence.

He made up a couple of plates, sliding them across to where Parker was still perched, leaving one aside for when Hardison turned up. An hour had passed and he didn't know how to explain it. They did it, they won, they were just fine. The wood of the bar felt like all the memories they'd lay upon it, warm and solid and bracing, filled with the goodness of a thousand thieves, the cunning of a million.

Eliot took a deep breath, watching his mastermind pick at the hash in front of her. _We could do this forever,_ he thought to himself, and every contingency plan in his head went silent. _We could_ , he thought, a whole world unfolding before him, picking at his plate.

***

Hardison was fiddling with some encryption on the Black Book when it happened. He had just gotten through the worst part, so they were all in high spirits. Parker was experimenting with a new harness, in the other room maybe, and Eliot was chopping something green and circle-looking, some sort of fancy K vegetable he didn't remember. He watched Eliot work, a stray curl bobbing near his cheek, and it hit him right then like one of Parker's tackle-hugs, how much he wanted this for the rest of his life.

His mind stuttered for a second, error messages flashing. The Black Book was going to be a big project, but it would end eventually, he knew that. Besides, there was a world of difference between Leverage being better than the alternative and wanting to build a life together, no matter how nice it'd be.

He flushed even though no one was looking because _wow_. He's never wanted to have anything so utterly ridiculous in his life so badly. Well, there was the food laser, and the life-sized Death Star, and those light-up heelies that were made custom, and a Halo 3 Zune back when people thought that-

Well. So he's wanted a lot of ridiculous things. He furrowed his brow, as if concentrating hard enough could make his brain not be out of whack, put all the Eliot Spencer thoughts back into their box. About a minute in, all he had achieved was Eliot looking at him askance and fetching him a cold pack "for his headache". He sighed, getting up to find Parker. She was better at the talking bits, anyway.

***

The problem with Hardison, Eliot realized, was that he overthought everything. He had already burned his fake identity on an earlier part of the con, and Parker was getting the necessary information, which left Hardison to try to charm the mark while she got away. Unfortunately, that put him on manning cybersecurity and wincing at Hardison's grifting.

"Hey, I'm doing amazing over here, don't give me your sass," he heard over the line, and he sighed. It would have been easy to do this, in the past. Just send Sophie in, or Nate, they always had options. As a side bonus, he didn't have to peck his way through the scrawled instructions Hardison had left, filled with abbreviations and soda stains and doodles down the sides.

His skin had felt stretched thin this whole case, waiting for voices that weren't there, running from places he hadn't been. NuWorks wasn't stingy with security, and everyone was playing double duty.

The problem with a 3 person team was that it didn't matter how good you were. All a job would need to do is ask you to be in 4 places at once. He could be on a team with the two best thieves he had ever met, and the greatest bounty anyone had ever stolen, and it wouldn't make a difference. Feedback screeched on the comms, Parker too near a radio, and he watched as Hardison flinched at seemingly nothing, hastily covering for it.

The problem was there were too many problems, he thought, and waited for a complication so he could do his job.

***

Hardison looked up as Parker sat down next to him. He was fairly sure the shirt she was wearing was his, and when she spoke her voice was soft. "I think Leverage International could have its first case."

He nodded. "Sounds good. Anything in particular you had in mind?" He watched the set of her shoulders for lack of anything else as she shrugged, his shirt pooling around her waist.

"There's this couple," she said. "Honest people, but they're alright. They have a kid who's in a lot of danger." She paused, letting him fill in the spaces.

Hardison hummed thoughtfully. "Lemme guess, shoddy product, the authorities couldn't do anything, and the company has connections."

Parker nodded, her ponytail bobbing behind her. "They just want their boy safe, and there isn't anyone who'll help them. They need-"

“Someone like you?” Hardison filled in, ribbing her just a little.

Parker paused, one knee rising up to press against Hardison's. “No,” she said, voice cracking around the syllable. “No, someone better than me.” She turned around before she could see his face, halfway up the ceiling in a second.

He watched her climb, waiting until she was halfway through the open skylight before calling behind her. "You're the best there is," he said, voice carrying, and meant it.

***

Parker pouted mulishly from the roof, frustrated at how empty the building felt, like Sophie and Nate had added space behind them as they walked out the door that afternoon. They just walked away from it, like they could leave, like there wasn't a world out there waiting to be stolen. She kicked at loose gravel, knocking some downwards onto the balcony.

"Hey," Eliot called out, carefully preventing the curl of his smile from showing, "if you're going to keep brooding up there, Peter Parker, stop glaring at the plants. You're worse than salt."

Parker peered over at him from the gutter, ponytail dangling over into the herb garden. "How do you stop wanting it so badly?"

He didn't ask her what 'it' was, for which she was grateful, shifting to break off a few stems of coriander. "It's different for me than it is for you two," he said, drawing out his accent to make her smile. He paused though, looking out at the city, saying something they were both aware of. "I used to be scared of the dark."

Parker pulled a face at the non-answer but clambered down behind him, settling pretzel-style on the railing and bracing with one hand on Hardison as he walked onto the balcony. She squinted against the wind as she looked down and tried to see something besides power grids.

***

Parker was pretty close, rigged up to the top of their headquarters and finagling some sort of lock mechanism, so she couldn't run away from the conversation. Hardison smiled, insides warm like always looking at her.

"Hey mama. How's it _hanging_?" His grin widened at the wrinkle of her nose, before continuing with his question. "How do you think Eliot would take us adding him to the lease, maybe moving him into the spare room on the sly, minor stuff like that?"

Parker looked at him for a second, doing something that was probably nowhere near as important as his problem, like not falling out of the rafters. "You're losing Eliot?" she tossed down, tongue poking out as something made a satisfying click.

He blinked, watching her rappel down. "Am I- I am not losing Eliot, dude is everywhere all the time and I want it to stay that way-" he narrowed his eyes at Parker as a thought occurred. "Wait. Did Eliot tell you he's leaving? Because you didn't say anything about it before, and we don't keep secrets, you know that."

She nodded, testing her knots. "I know he's right here," she said, like she wasn't convinced.

Hardison looked at her askance, speaking slowly. "He won't go anywhere anytime soon," he said, a truth he knew she knew, why would she- "Here is what he has. Well, unless I screw this up real bad, but he's here right now" He let out a breath, hearing the words as he said them, listening to the bustle of Eliot in the kitchen still and the soft clanking of Parker's gear. "Thanks babe, you're great. How does Leverage International sound? I was thinking of getting business cards, gold foil and stuff."

She didn't look at him as he walked away, but that was alright. He knew she was thinking up there. She'd get back to him.

***

It is harsh, the wind, pulling at the edges of her clothes and the tendrils of her hair. The city opens out below her, hundreds of thousands of people completely unaware of her above them.

The file presses tight against Parker's chest, her smile stretching the corners of her mouth while voices bicker in her head. And then she is falling, and she is falling, and she never wants to stop.

**Author's Note:**

> afrocurl, I hope you like this! Title taken from "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock", by T.S. Eliot. Mystery vegetable is kohlrabi. Concrit and kudos much appreciated, more fic at curarechai.tumblr.com


End file.
